With further development of a computer network and a requirement of a mass data computing capability, various computer hardware with a strong computing capability constantly emerges. In addition, a global information system World Wide Web is also very popular. The emergence of these software and hardware technologies or devices provides a possibility to put forward a new type of computing model referred to as “cloud computing”.
In a narrow sense, cloud computing refers to a delivery and usage mode of an information technology (IT) infrastructure, that is, obtaining required resources using a network in an on-demand and ease-of-scalability manner; and a network providing resources is called “cloud”. In the view of a user, resources in the “cloud” may be infinitely extended, and may be acquired at any time, extended at any time, used on-demand, and paid according to usage.
In a broad sense, cloud computing refers to a delivery and usage mode of a service, that is, obtaining a required service using a network in an on-demand and ease-of-scalability manner. This service may relate to IT, software, and Internet, and may also be another service, and the network providing the service is called “cloud”. The “cloud” is virtual computing resources capable of implementing self-maintenance and self-management, which generally are large server clusters, including a computing server, a storage server, and broadband resources. Cloud computing implements unified management and scheduling for a large amount of computing resources connected using a network, where the computing resources form a computing resource pool, so as to provide on-demand services for users.
Because cloud computing has features such as a very large scale, virtualization, a high reliability, commonality, a high scalability, and an on-demand service, cloud computing increasingly attracts wide attention.
In a cloud computing application, a cloud computing system integrates computing resources, storage resources, and network resources, and provides the resources for users by means of a network using technologies such as virtualization. An application form, for example, is lease of a virtual machine (VM), a computing capability, and a storage capability.
At present, due to reasons such as different types of resource requirements, computing resources and storage resources provided by the cloud computing system generally require different devices and are independently deployed. For example, an independently deployed computing resource requires a computing device, and an independently deployed storage resource requires a storage device, for example, a dedicated storage array or storage server such as a storage area network (SAN), thereby providing services to the outside.
Because the computing device and the storage device are independently deployed, a device investment cost of the cloud computing system is high, occupied space is large, and a lot of energy is lost. In another aspect, each storage device independently provides a storage service to the outside, a utilization rate of storage resources is low, and reliability is poor.